The title may surprise you a bit as Jack O'Connor, the preeminent gunwriter of his day is often associated, quite correctly, with trophy sheep huntingand his lasting observations on the big game rifle and big game hunting. Not quite as strictly true is the O'Connor championing of the .270 Winchester cartridge and the Winchester Model 70 rifle. But what of upland hunting? Though not quite as topical as Shotgunning: The Art and Science by Bob Brister, Mr. O'Connor's common-sense, practical observations about upland hunting are refreshingly crisp compared to most of what is written elsewhere. Jack O'Connor wrote often and thoroughly about upland hunting, with his The Shotgun Book of 1968 being his most notable effort on the subject.

What is upland hunting, anyway? As O'Connor correctly notes, it covers a tremendous amount of ground. Any bird hunting that is isn't waterfowl hunting can be considered upland hunting. Today, the most shells expended award goes handily to the dove, still dwarfing all target sports by a considerable margin.

Jack was happy to comment on why wingshooters generally shoot so poorly in the field: lack of practice. The fellows that can't bear to shoot at anything that doesn't have feathers and leak blood are invariably sub-standard shots. Even those that might fancy themselves as gifted would be far, far more effective if they spent some time practicing. Thus it is with every sport, so wingshooting is hardly immune from the effects of lack of practice and lack of experience. Clay target games were originally created to help hunters become more effective shooters in the field. Clay pigeons in trap displaced glass balls, which previously had displaced live pigeons. Skeet was designed for hunters, as was sporting clays.

Jack was quick to point up that the gauge of a shotgun doesn't mean much, dubbing the twenty gauge as the “Queen of the Uplands.” Gauge still doesn't matter much, but what does matter is sorely neglected and rarely talked about: range. Range makes all the difference in the world. The complication is, upland hunting has no specific range. It could be a New England grouse at ten yards. It could be pass-shooting at doves at 55 yards and everything in-between. That's where all the notions of gauge, choke and shot size get complicated, as no one really knows what is being referred to when someone says they want a shotgun for upland hunting. This is, of course, a wonderful prescription for confusion reigning supreme, as rarely does anyone know what the next person is talking about.

You'll hear this constantly: What's a good load and choke for doves? Oh, you'll get advice, as in “I use a modified,” but it has no foundation. The starting point is the ranges that you expect the pellets to hit the bird, without that information, there can be no rational discussion. You might be in a blind near a waterhole for very slow, close range work, you might be standing in a wheat field taking what comes, or you might be jump-shooting out of sunflowers. Who knows? Only the individual concerned. Most of us don't pay much attention to range, but we should. A rangefinder has long humbled me, but more importantly is a constant training aid. If we don't get a grasp of ranges, we are often just making hulls out of otherwise perfectly good shells.

Jack O'Connor ordered his custom Model 21 twenty gauge in 1955 and embraced three inch shells even back then. He felt that three inch shells made a real duck gun out of the twenty gauge. Jack also wrote glowingly about Federal Cartridge's 1 oz. 28 gauge load, introduced in the 1950s, that made a practical pheasant gun out of the 28 gauge at 30-35 yards. Jack's observations about barrel length were a bit ahead of its time, as he wrote that most upland pumps and autos would be better handling guns with 23-24 inch barrels, and he preferred 25-26 inch barrels on his doubles, with a nod to the Churchill 25 inch light twelves. One of the most unusual thoughts from Jack O'Connor is where he felt the center of the pattern should be on upland guns: one foot high at 40 yards. That's not universally held today, by any means, but Jack felt it was ideal for flushing game, as you can hold right on a flushing quail or pheasant and nail it, as Jack wrote.

As is customary with many of the O'Connor literary efforts, he offered no absolutes, no hard, fast, exact rules. Tremendously varied game, distances and conditions just don't allow for them. What Jack O'Connor did communicate very well was the importance of considering range as paramount, letting your firearm, ammunition and choking choices flow from that. Also included was the gentle, but constant O'Connor admonition to practice, practice and then go practice. All sensible considerations that you'd universally expect from America's greatest gunwriter.